LUPINO, Ida

Nationality:
American.
Born:
London, England, 4 February 1918, daughter of the actor Stanley Lupino
and the actress Connie Emerald; became U.S. citizen in 1948.
Education:
Attended Clarence House
School, Hove, Sussex; Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, London.
Family:
Married 1) the actor Louis Hayward, 1938 (divorced 1945); 2) the writer
Collier Young, 1948 (divorced 1951); 3) the actor Howard Duff, 1951
(divorced 1972), daughter: Bridget.
Career:
Stage debut at Tom Thumb Theatre, London, at age 12; late
1920s—extra in films for British International Studios;
1932—first lead role in
Her First Affaire
; 1933–37—contract with Paramount; 1939—success in
The Light that Failed
: contract with Warner Brothers; 1949—co-founder, with Anson Bond,
Emerald Productions: producer, co-director, and co-scriptwriter of
Not Wanted
; 1950—director of the film
Never Fear
, 1950–80—co-owner, with Collier Young, Film-makers Company;
1952—co-founder, with Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, and David Niven,
Four Star Productions for television; 1956—director for TV series
On Trial
; 1957–58—in TV series
Mr. Adams and Eve
; 1957–66—worked exclusively in television.
Awards:
Best Actress, New York Film Critics, for
The Hard Way
, 1943.
Died:
Of cancer, in Burbank, California, 3 August 1995.

A heart-shaped face, bowed lips, and large clear eyes gave her a
Bo-Peepish quality, but Ida Lupino's strongest screen
characterizations would make any self-respecting nursery-rhyme shepherdess
blush! Lupino excelled in playing vixens and society's cast-offs.
After spending six teenaged years appearing in mediocre parts, she
attained stardom in the role of the selfish Cockney prostitute who is
driven to madness after posing as a model for an obsessive artist (Ronald
Colman) in
The Light That Failed
. She followed that role with an equally strong interpretation of a brazen
lowlife in
They Drive by Night
. In that film, she dazzled critics as a bitch who kills her husband, goes
after a man who spurns her, and then goes mad when things do not go her
way.

Lupino once allegedly called herself "a poor man's Bette
Davis." This is a cheapening remark, because Lupino had a screen
presence unlike Davis or any other Hollywood leading lady. Like Davis, she
was able to show backbone and ingenuity, especially when her character was
up against the wall. What made her unique, however, was her ability to
utilize soft, refined good looks and delicate mannerisms to play tough,
unsympathetic women. In
High Sierra
, Lupino is at her best as a young thing who latches onto mobster Humphrey
Bogart. What might have been no more than a onedimensional helpless female
role becomes a vivid characterization. She is like a stray cat, a rootless
little-girl-lost who begs Bogart not to make her go back to the seedy
"nightspot" where she used to work. At the same time she is
determined and womanly, a warm beacon of sorts for a mobster who craves to
retire to home and hearth.

In the films that are among the high points of her career, Lupino worked
for William Wellman and several times for Raoul Walsh—two directors
noted for creating pictures with rough, sometimes gritty brush strokes.
When Lupino formed her own production company in 1949, she chose to
produce motion pictures dealing with social themes, films reflecting the
toughness of Wellman and Walsh. But these films presented social dramas
with a new frankness. Lupino may have been influenced by the postwar
Italian neorealist films, or perhaps she simply saw the power the genre of
social drama could have when it renounced Hollywood glitz. In any case,
Not Wanted
,
Outrage
, and
The Bigamist
deal with, respectively, unwed mothers, rape, and bigamy. These are
topics that were considered taboo by the major studios. At a time when no
other woman was directing Hollywood feature films, Lupino was
directing—and her films were not feminine powder-puff drivel. She
paid detailed attention to the miseries women-as-victims were encountering
as underdogs in society. Her success in directing these low-budget but
effective and durable films is linked to her prior experience of acting
troubled female characters. By then, she knew what worked, and what did
not.

As a feminist film theory developed, it was ironic that Lupino actually
was scoffed at for presenting women as victims rather than aggressors.
Then, the tide turned and she was properly lauded as a significant pioneer
among women directors.

From the mid-1950s on, Lupino practically disappeared from the screen. Of
her scant celluloid roles during her last years, by far the best is Elvira
Bonner, the estranged wife of Ace Bonner (Robert Preston), in
Junior Bonner
. Here she is acting with an intensity reminiscent of her strongest
Hollywood roles. Age, however, had added a craggy naturalism to her looks
and moves. Once again, critics hailed her acting achievement. Rather than
catapult her into another round of first-rate parts, it turned out to be
her last important role.

—Audrey E. Kupferberg

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